


Still Here

by 26stars



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, I've always loved how they're blunt with one another, Philinda Secret Santa, Sharing a Bed, Sick Fic, otp or brotp depending how you look at it, s3-4 interim, set in s3-4 interim, spoilers for S3 finale, there are so many ways to need to recover
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-23
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-09-11 10:57:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,741
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8976865
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/26stars/pseuds/26stars
Summary: They're all trying to recover from everything that's happened in these past few months. Sometimes, the easiest person to overlook is yourself.Philinda Secret Santa fic for philipthegirlnickelPrompt: You're running a bad fever





	

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: Set in the s3-4 interim. The new director has been announced but hasn’t arrived on the Playground yet. Daisy has disappeared but is not yet causing trouble.

There is no reason for him to be walking around the base this late at night; the sight of these halls doesn’t bring him any comfort anymore. The base still bears scars from these months when it has weathered the most unexpected of assaults—earthquakes, monsters, pathogens, mutiny—and, like they have so many times before, the remaining survivors are still in recovery mode. The few faces he glimpses in passages and windows are drawn and tired, everyone doing more than their share to help repair the damage everything Hive and his swayed followers left in their wake. Maybe that’s why he’s still walking—to be certain whether or not a single pocket of his base— _his team_ —has escaped the carnage.

Perhaps worst of all is how empty the Playground feels. He is painfully aware of every face he _doesn’t_ see as he treads the tired halls. Fitz and Simmons are gone, testifying (again) at Radcliff’s trial, when means the remaining lab techs are pulling double duty trying to repair the lab and resume their usual operations without them. The remaining Primitives (and he hates himself for thinking of them like that because they’re Agents of SHIELD who deserve better) are gone, in quarantine at an undisclosed location while Science works on a reversal. Elena is gone, on indefinite medical leave back in Colombia; Bobbi and Hunter are still gone and dark (though Coulson did receive a text message from a blocked number last week that just said _Heard what happened. So sorry._ ). Lincoln’s…gone.

And now Daisy’s gone, too.

She had disappeared nearly a month ago, only a few days after their team had finally staggered back into base, each of them shaken and overwhelmed, but her more shattered then any of them. She had been inconsolable for the entire flight back down to terra firma, but after the first night back in the base, she had become…silent. A ghost. She barely left her room, and when she had, she had drifted catatonically through the halls, seemingly unaware of anything around her. She had seemed deaf to words spoken in her direction, shook off any attempts at comfort from Simmons and him and even May…and then one day she didn’t surface at all.

She’d scrambled the security footage for a five-hour window the night she left. There was no note, but it was clear that she didn’t want to be followed. He had tried calling her SHIELD phone once, only to discover that she had left the device in one of her desk drawers.

He knew that wasn’t a good sign, but he was holding onto the hope that she just didn’t want to be tracked through the phone’s GPS. She’d call when she was ready, or she would come back. He would certainly prefer the latter.

Mack had asked him if he wanted to track her down, but Coulson was trying to let her do what she needed to do to feel okay after the trauma she'd been through. And if she needed to be somewhere else—away from them—to heal, then he knew it was his job to let her go.

He’d watched a friend do this before, not so many years ago.

As he passes the mouth one of the less-used halls, one mostly used for storage, he can hear someone moving boxes in one of the rooms down near the end, muted sounds of scraping and sliding drifting down the brick-and-mortar tunnels. Knowing he ought to check in on anyone who would be busy enough to do manual labor at this hour of night, he turns down the hall, making his way to the open door.

Somehow, he’s both surprised and unsurprised by who he sees.

In the dim light, she’s working quietly, methodically opening crates and boxes, labeling them with adhesives and a marker, closing them up again and shelving them, following an invisible system.

He knocks once on the door, just to make sure he doesn’t startle her, as he steps into the doorway.

“What are you doing, May?”

She glances over, not seeming terribly surprised to see him, but her gaze doesn’t quite meet his as she steps back from a shelf and rests one hand on her hip. Her black shirt is dusty.

“Just trying to get reorganized,” she answers, looking away under the pretense of surveying the room. “The new guy’s lackeys have been moving everything around since they got here. They haven’t taken this privilege away yet though, so…”

“Going through all the SSR’s old stuff?” he asks, surprised. May had never seemed to take as much joy in historical items as he did…

She just picks up another file box and slides it onto a shelf. “They’re trying to make sure we know who’s in charge now,” she mutters. “But I don’t want them touching what was never theirs.”

She bends to slide a larger crate into a space she’s cleared on a bottom shelf, and he catches sight of the large letters she’s marked on the lid—LC.

“Is that…”

“I didn’t have the heart to get rid of anything in Lincoln’s bunk,” she answers, straightening up but still avoiding his eyes. “But I wanted to at least get his things in storage before anyone else—anyone new—made other plans for them.”

“We can ask Daisy what she wants to do with them when she gets back,” he says, watching as she rubs the back of her neck, staring at the crate.

“Yeah.”

Talking like her return is certain. It doesn’t do much to convince him, but he tries it anyway.

She sighs, and he notices that she leans her weight for a brief moment against a shelf.

“Getting used to not being the man in charge yet?” she asks, finally meeting his eyes. She’s rubbing one hand over her arm now, as if trying to rub warmth into it, a gesture that he hasn't seen her do in a long time. Red flags go up, and he ignores her question.

“It’s pretty late,” he says. “Can you call it a night?”

She glances around the room and shrugs.

“I think I’m done with this room anyway,” she agrees (far too easily), moving towards the door.

As she steps directly beneath the single bulb on her way towards him, Coulson finally sees her face clearly.

Her cheeks are flushed.

“May, you don’t look so good,” he says bluntly as she approaches the door.

“I’m fine,” she mutters, stepping around him and flipping off the lights on her way back into the hallway.

He wouldn’t dare touch her face or neck without warning, but he brushes his hand lightly over her back as she passes and feels heat pouring through her shirt. More alarming--she’s not sweating.

He spins, closing the storage room door and quickly catching up to her.

“May—“

She doesn’t stop. “Please don’t.”

He knows it would be a mistake to try to catch her arm, so he settles for stepping directly in front of her, halting her in the hall. “You’re obviously running a fever and I’m not going to pretend I don’t know it. You can either go with me to the kitchen and take your own temperature there, or I can drag you to medical where a stranger can do it. Choose.”

She glares at him for a long moment in silence, but when she does move, it’s to turn down the appropriate hall towards the kitchen. "I'd like to see you try to drag me anywhere," he hears her grumble.

He follows her all the way to the common room, which is thankfully deserted.

“Sit down on the sofa,” he orders. “I’ll be right back.”

If he hadn’t been certain she was sick already, he would have known it by her posture when he walked back into the room. She’s tucked into the corner of the sofa, her forehead propped up on one hand, and now she’s visibly shivering.

“When was the last time you had anything to eat or drink?” he asks as he approaches her, sliding a sanitary sheath over the digital thermometer and clicking it on before handing it to her.

“Had something around lunch,” she mutters before tucking the thermometer under her tongue. “Haven’t been hungry.”

“May…” he sighs, appalled but not really surprised.

She avoids his gaze, ducking her head again, and he goes to the refrigerator and pours a short glass of orange juice, setting it on the arm of the sofa before carefully sitting down beside her.

“How long have you been feeling bad?”

The thermometer beeps, and she pulls it out, glancing at the digits.

“Eight years…” she mutters, turning the thermometer so he can see the screen.

102 degrees Fahrenheit.

“Jesus, May,” he sighs, pulling a bottle of aspirin out of his pocket and shaking four small pills into his hand. “Take these, drink the juice, and then you’re going to bed.”

“There’s too much to do,” she sighs, looking away as she picks up the glass and accepts the pills. “We don't have many people left.”

He opens his mouth to retort, to remind her that she’s not helping anyone if she neglects herself to this point, but then he realizes from her tone that she wasn’t trying to excuse herself. She’s just stating a fact.

And she sounds, for the first time since everything in this awful year began…so, so _sad_.

She lost all the same people from this mess too. The agents that are now locked up in quarantine…some of them were her old friends. Whatever she’d felt or not felt for Lincoln, he knows she still saw him as her responsibility. And besides that, there’s the whole situation with Andrew that they’ve still never been able to talk about, but it happened, and it happened in the middle of everything else with Hive...

And Daisy, and Daisy, and Daisy…

He didn’t even notice that she was drinking the juice, but now, she sets an empty glass on the cushion between them and flashes two palms empty of pills.

“I understand,” he says quietly, standing and holding a hand out to her, his last order still in effect. She takes his hand and stands without argument, but she does let go as they walk beside each other towards the door. “You’re doing so much right now that you shouldn’t have to do. But the last thing I want is to see you hurting because the last person you cared for was yourself.”

Those words sum up eight years. He knows she invented that move.

They walk to her bunk in silence, and he walks in with her, filling a glass with water from the tap in her ensuite bathroom and wetting a washcloth. He sets the water with the thermometer and the bottle of aspirin on her nightstand as she kicks off her shoes and climbs, fully-clothed, beneath the covers of her bed.

“Take two more whenever you wake up,” he requests, passing her the rag, which she lays over her own forehead as she lies back on the pillow. “Don’t even think about getting out of bed before your fever breaks. I’ll come check on you in the morning.”

“You know, you’re technically not able to give me orders anymore,” she reminds him, cracking an eye as she settles into the mattress. “You don’t have to act like you’re just worried about your worker.”

“I know. I’m worried about my _friend_ who doesn’t listen to me unless I make staying healthy an order,” he reminds her, reaching for the switch on her lamp.

“Phil,” she says with a weight that makes his fingers hesitate on the switch, and he looks over at her. Her eyes look a little glassy, but she’s staring at him solemnly.

“This isn’t your fault, you know.”

He stares at her for a long moment, the names piling up in his mind, the names of the agents who were his responsibility, who are disfigured or dead because of his orders, who time and science may not be able to save. The agents gone because he couldn’t do what was necessary to keep them here or keep them safe. The agent gone, alone with her grief, because he created the monster that ruined her life…

He almost jumps as May’s hand touches his.

Her scalding fingers wrap around his own, tugging them off the switch, and he feels her pulling gently.

“Come on,” she murmurs, patting the space on the mattress beside her. “I wouldn’t sleep too close in case I’m contagious, but you need to sleep too.”

She smiles weakly, and the look in her eyes it enough to send a final fissure webbing through his heart, crumbling the last of his resolve and half-hearted self-reassurance. He tries to smile back, but he knows she can tell what is happening as he climbs gratefully into bed beside her, and she reaches over to switch off the lamp.

Darkness descends, and as he settles down, he reaches for her hand.

“It’s not your fault,” she murmurs again, invisible beside him. She squeezes his fingers, and he’s thinking of the heat pouring out of her skin but also of how thankful he is that of everyone who’s gone, she’s the one who is still here _._

“I killed Ward on that planet, and that gave Maveth all he needed to come back and wreak this havoc…I ordered you to catch Hive and _bring him into our base…_ ”

“You can play that game with yourself if you want,” she says, her grip tightening in his. “But to what end? Are you trying to punish yourself until you feel better? It doesn’t work that way, believe me.”

He know he can take her word for it. She’s been living for years with her own haunting regrets.

“If you know it’s not worth it, then what’s the better option?” he asks, hoping for a genuine answer.

She gives him one.

“You don’t have to forgive yourself—that’s your choice, and no one can make it for you. But if all you do in response to what you’ve done is hate yourself…at the end of the day, that’s only selfish. It still ends with self. But you can channel all that energy you usually put into beating yourself up into taking care of everyone else. Sometimes you can stay busy enough loving others that you forget what hating yourself feels like.”

“Is that how you feel about yourself?”

She doesn’t answer, but he takes it as a good sign that she doesn’t pull her hand away.

“I’m worried that Daisy’s doing the same thing to herself,” she finally sighs, a blatant topic change that he chooses to let slide. “She’s hurting; she’s feeling guilty. And I want to give her that space and that time that she needs to recover, but I’m worried about the hole she’ll dig herself into if there’s no one shining a light down into that well with her. And I’m afraid that she wouldn’t ask for help even if she knew she needed it.”

He smiles even though she knows she can’t see it. “That reminds me of someone, but I can’t put my finger on who.”

He imagines her glaring at him, and he squeezes her hand again.

“I want her to have a safe place to come back to,” he says, saving her the need for a comeback, “but SHIELD still isn’t that anymore. Not for her, not for anyone right now. We’re still trying to patch the holes, and I just hope that she feels better wherever she’s gone to.”

“One step at a time,” she murmurs, sounding sleepier, and he shifts closer until his arm presses lightly against hers.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he whispers, closing his eyes.

_Please stay._

“I’m not going anywhere,” she exhales, words slurring tiredly, and he runs his thumb softly over hers until he hears her breathing stretch out into the sustained rhythm of sleep.

He counts the heartbeats he feels in her fingers and memorizes how her hand feels, wrapped in his, and as he drifts off too, he realizes that he never did find a place that escaped the wreckage of the year they’ve had. But he did find something—someone—that has somehow made it through. Tired, beaten, but unbroken. Strong and steady and still here.

**Author's Note:**

> I've never written this pairing before so I seriously appreciate any and all feed back. Thanks for reading!


End file.
